Description: This attractive, foliose, epiphytic lichen with smooth, pearly, blue-grey, flat-spreading lobes covered in a sooty-speckled deposit of club-shaped, flat-topped isidia occurs commonly on dusty, wayside trees in towns and villages throughout Ireland. It often grows on trees forming neat avenues or those which line the edges or middle of lawns planted to divide roads from residences. Medulla C+ red. Throughout Ireland.

Key Identification Features:

• Leafy lichen with pearly-grey, flattened lobes and numerous sooty-black isidia shaped like a door knob
• Grows on dusty wayside trees by busy roads especially on lawns and central reservations. The similar P. tiliacea has smaller, branched stick-like isidia which are grey with brown tips (never sooty-looking).

Original text submitted by Vince J. Giavarini

Distribution Map from NBN: Parmelina pastillifera at National Biodiversity Network mapping facility, data for UK.

iNaturalist: Parmelina pastillifera at iNaturalist World Species Observations database.